Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- Generally speaking, what is allowed for a Muslim girl or women to show from her body are the face and hands.
2- It is the duty of each woman to abide by Shari`ah rulings in regard. In the presence of her fiancé, a girl should wear modest clothes.
Responding to your question, Dr. Zainab Alwani, the Founding Director of the Islamic Studies program at Howard University School of Divinity (HUSD), states:
It was narrated that in one hadith that Al-Mughirah Ibn Shubah said, “I asked for a woman in marriage and the Prophet (peace and blessings be on him) asked me whether I had looked at her. When I replied that I had not, he said, ‘Then look at her, for it may produce love between you.‘ (Ahmad)
Displaying the face and hands is generally believed to be permissible.
However, a woman is not supposed to show her beauty in unlawful way nor should she appear in tight clothes and the like.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.